Tag: Online Portals

“Suppose each time you ran low on an item in your kitchen—olive oil, bananas, napkins—your instinctive response was to drop everything and race to the store. How much time would you lose? How much money would you squander on gas? What would happen to your productivity?”

That’s the hypothetical scenario that Ron Friedman, a psychologist and author of The Best Place to Work: The Art and Science of Creating an Extraordinary Workplace, introduces in a Harvard Business Review article examining the “cognitive price” of interrupting a task that requires dedicated focus.

“We all recognize the inefficiency of this approach,” writes Friedman. “And yet surprisingly, we often work in ways that are equally wasteful.” …read more

TPAs continue to face increasing pressure to find more innovative ways to drive efficiency and do more with less. An article in Lexology states, “Automated claim processing is the future for insurance carriers, third-party administrators (TPA’s) and large employers, to improve efficiency and reduce the resources required to process claims.” Determining a strategy for automating claims handling can be challenging.

A recent post examined the ways top performers approached automation. One key benchmark study of differentiators recommended: “Employ claims decision support tools – such as workflow automation, advanced analytics, and predictive modeling – and use them more frequently throughout the claim lifecycle.” In fact, top performers are 4X more likely to use automation throughout the cycle than all others.

To achieve the results similar to those of top producers, a comprehensive approach to improvements through technology must be employed. …read more

A recent Business Intelligence article draws from a Redhand report claiming that “of all of the subsectors of the RMIS industry, the third-party administrator sector is the one that is the most in transition.” The article suggests this may be due to the fact that TPAs are trying to remain competitive while relying on fewer resources than insurers.

What is clear, according to the Redhand report, is that TPAs are trying to level the playing field with technology. “As will become obvious, there has been a lot of investment and improvement in the TPA sector regarding information technology…” The larger question is, are these substantial investments in upgrading systems even focused on the right area? A survey of customer data indicates this may not be the case.

The use of RMIS technology that has been designed to handle the values collection process can help to reduce the amount of time risk management teams spend gathering data.

For risk professionals, the conclusion of a 2017 risk management survey will likely come as no surprise: “Risk Managers, regardless of experience level, are being asked to do more with less.”

Nearly one-third (31%) of respondents indicate that given “additional time”, they would focus on improving internal processes. “The survey results point to Risk Managers being mired in the day-to-day task of servicing their internal constituents, making it difficult to pivot to the strategic questions being raised by their CFOs.” …read more

When clients are actively engaged with their carrier, the organization gains the opportunity to provide higher value services that can help clients make strategic decisions and drive down costs. Paper-based and labor-intensive processes, legacy systems that struggle with modern requirements, and data siloed in disparate, unconnected applications all run counter to this effort. Origami Risk, however, provides several features that allow carriers to fully engage with their clients and deliver actionable, strategic data that can impact clients’ bottom line.

Meeting the Modern Demands of Today’s Client

In our recent Trends That Will Shape 2018 post, we highlighted how the increasing demand for 24/7 access to information and self-service is expanding from the consumer market into all types of organizations. For insureds and agents, this translates into a desire for greater access to critical data, and to have it customized to fit with the way they want to work with it. …read more

As organizations, risk management pools are created to serve and benefit their members. When members are actively engaged with the pool, not only is this primary mission being fulfilled, but the organization also gains the opportunity to provide higher value services that can help members make strategic decisions and drive down costs. Paper-based and labor-intensive processes, legacy systems that struggle with modern requirements, and data stored in disparate, unconnected applications all run counter to this effort. Origami Risk, however, provides several features that allow pools to fully engage with their membership and deliver actionable, strategic data that can impact members’ bottom line. …read more

2017 was an eventful year in business. From record-setting natural disasters, to high profile announcements on technology choices, to the expansion of self-service technology further into all sectors of business, businesses faced several key challenges this year. We’ve put together a list of trends in 2018 that may emerge from these issues.

Renewed Focus on Disaster Recovery/Continuity

With a record-setting hurricane season and overall losses estimated at over $360B, Munich Re reports that 2017 was the second most expensive year for natural disasters ever recorded. In the US alone, fires ravaged California and the pacific northwest, floods and hurricanes struck the southeast, and no fewer than five major tornado/hail outbreaks occurred, each causing more than $1B in losses. Globally, the past year’s other disasters included typhoons, severe flooding, earthquakes and volcano eruptions. Ernst Rauch, head of Munich Re’s Corporate Climate Center, stated that these patterns were likely to continue. “We have a new normal. 2017 was not an outlier.”

As businesses are faced with operating in environments where large scale natural disasters are increasingly common, expect to see a renewed focus on disaster recovery and business continuity. Rebounding from these events and returning to normal operations will become another factor on which businesses need to compete. One of our clients used Origami Risk to monitor and track the progress of relocations and reopenings after the floodings in Houston, demonstrating an innovative way to utilize RMIS technology to overcome these challenges.